Tentacle-Free Anime: "Blade Runner: Black Out 2022"(2017)

Truth be told, I had never seen the original Blade Runner until the day that I ended up seeing 2049. I'm not really sure why I had never sat down to watch it before then, but it was really cool making that Saturday a full BR marathon where I watched the original, this short we're looking at today, and then the new film. Overall it was a great back-to-back experience. Go check out the new movie.

Summary: In 2022, an EMP detonation has caused a global blackout that has massive, destructive implications all over the world. Directed by Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo's Shinichiro Watanabe, Blade Runner: Black Out 2022 is a new and highly-anticipated animated short which serves as a prologue for the upcoming feature film Blade Runner 2049. [Crunchyroll.com]

The original Blade Runner is a sci-fi classic, to put it mildly. So much that has come after it has taken from it concepts and added to them in often brilliant ways. Anime was hugely impacted. With the newest (brilliant) movie having recently dropped, it was only natural that anime finally be tapped to tell a story set in this world as if bringing everything full circle. Getting Watanabe to direct this short was also a stroke of genius, you couldn't have made a better choice unless 2049 director Denis Velleneuve had gotten Mamoru Oshii to do it.

Blade Runner: A Bad Night Out

The original Blade Runner is a sci-fi classic, to put it mildly. So much that has come after it has taken from it concepts and added to them in often brilliant ways. Anime was hugely impacted. With the newest (brilliant) movie having recently dropped, it was only natural that anime finally be tapped to tell a story set in this world as if bringing everything full circle. Getting Watanabe to direct this short was also a stroke of genius, you couldn't have made a better choice unless 2049 director Denis Velleneuve had gotten Mamoru Oshii to do it.

With all that in mind, there's something very surreal about watching this short and understanding so much of this franchise's cultural impact and knowing as well that this story is also canon to the first film and the new one. Thankfully you don't have to see this in order to watch the new movie, but trust me it helps with the overall experience if you do. Because, smartly, 2049 draws from the storylines of the original movie and this in order to make the new world it's built work.

Black Out 2022 sets itself three years after the original film. Focusing on a small set of new wave Replicants dealing with a wave of superior human riots, where as the humans are hunting down Replicants and killing them for fear of being replaced. While they go about it the wrong way, obviously, it's actually an understandable fear when anyone can be cloned with indeterminable lifespan and you may not be sure who around you is a clone.

Seriously, this is gorgeous

​This was the backbone of the original film as well, but these riots see those fears take on their final form until this small band of Replicants we follow end up causing the titular black out. Now, this is not a very long story. Only about 15 or so minutes in full. So to make this story good and everlasting was gonna be tough no matter what. Honestly, if we could have, I would have preferred to see this be a full 30 minute affair focusing on an entire band of Replicants teaming up together to cause a global blackout, other than the two that we get as, well the one human.

​If there's anything that I thought the short really failed in, it was connecting the dots more fluidly between how these three team up for the same cause. We're introduced to our human traitor, Ren, in a flashback scene as the companion to the female Replicant Trixie, but considering our main male Replicant Iggy only stumbles upon Trixie by happenstance before teaming up with her, it's unclear how she ended up away from Ren in the first place to him then teaming up with them.

The through-line connection between the three of them can be assumed but I wish it had been made more conclusive so that we can care for why these characters are teaming up in the first place. Otherwise the character connections feel more contrived and it makes for a less astounding impact when some of them die but overall succeed in the mission.

The characters themselves are fun to watch, at least. I like Iggy, I like Trixie, but I jut don't know enough about to Ren to really care about him. I like them separately, but I just never got to see them together long enough to know how feel about them as a unit united by a similar cause.

Even Replicants wish to know their place in our society

The animation is stellar and the music definitely borrows from the original film, if not using the same tracks it's definitely got the same haunting feel. There were a few times in the animation where things reminded me of King of Thorn when it would switch from nicely stylized 2D art to choppy moving 3D animation.

Overall, I really did like Black Out 2022 and I do feel like it is a worthy addition to the mythos. But it would have been better to see like a Seal Team 6 style operation rather than a couple of individuals basically getting lucky. That would have been a cooler addition.

Final Score: 3.5 Fodder Soldiers out of 5

Have you checked out Netflix's Neo Yokio? What are you going to get people you don't like for Christmas if not a Toblerone? Let us know in the comments!